Before The Coffee » Photography

My neighbor came walking down the street with her camera and friends to shoot some pics at the local reservoir. We stopped and talked about photography and later started emailing. Her name is Tory and she is an up and coming portrait photographer that posts on Instagram.

Tory had an idea for a shoot so we decided to collaborate, she’d bring the models and I’d set up the lighting and studio. The theme was LGBT and all were welcome, supporters, advocates or those that identified themselves as LGBT.

LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender. Some abbreviations have an “Q” on the end as an option to include “Questioning,” LBGTQ.

It was an amazing event. They weren’t the popular high school superficial crowd. They were awkward, funky and most of all supportive of each other. 13 people came, some wanted to have their pic taken, some didn’t.

There was talk about being Gay and talk about hurt from other students. They wrote on cards the words that have hurt them, then with the shutter clicking they tore them up. Some finished with tears in their eyes. They were so open and accepting of each other. I’d love to do a documentary video of the group.

I set up a cyan gel shooting into a reflector on the floor in front, a red gel shooting into a reflector to the left and a beauty dish to my right and above, no gel. At times I removed the colored gels.